hapijs joi up to 17.13.8/18.3.0 Email Rule Joi.string.email resource consumption

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability identified as problematic has been detected in hapijs joi up to 17.13.8/18.3.0. This vulnerability affects the function Joi.string.email of the component Email Rule. The manipulation leads to resource consumption. This vulnerability is uniquely identified as CVE-2026-118772. The attack is possible to be carried out remotely. No exploit exists. You should upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as problematic, has been found in hapijs joi up to 17.13.8/18.3.0. This issue affects the function Joi.string.email of the component Email Rule. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a resource consumption vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-400. The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource, thereby enabling an actor to influence the amount of resources consumed, eventually leading to the exhaustion of available resources. Impacted is availability. The summary by CVE is:

joi is a schema description language and data validator for JavaScript. From 17.1.1 until 17.13.9 and 18.3.1, the Joi.string().email({ multiple: true }) rule uses a separator regular expression whose leading whitespace quantifier is retried at every position in a long whitespace run that contains no separator, causing quadratic work during String.prototype.split. The behavior applies to the default separator and every custom separator. Applications that validate attacker-controlled values with the multiple option and no effective prior length limit can have the Node.js event loop blocked for seconds by one request, preventing other work. A .max() rule is not sufficient when abortEarly: false allows the email rule to run after the maximum-length check fails. This vulnerability is fixed in versions 17.13.9 and 18.3.1.

The advisory is shared at github.com. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2026-118772 since 10/28/2026. The exploitation is known to be easy. The attack may be initiated remotely. No form of authentication is needed for a successful exploitation. Technical details are known, but no exploit is available. MITRE ATT&CK project uses the attack technique T1499 for this issue.

Upgrading to version 17.13.9 or 18.3.1 eliminates this vulnerability.

If you want to get the best quality for vulnerability data then you always have to consider VulDB.

Productinfo

Vendor

• hapijs

Name

• joi

Version

• 17.13.0
• 17.13.1
• 17.13.2
• 17.13.3
• 17.13.4
• 17.13.5
• 17.13.6
• 17.13.7
• 17.13.8
• 18.0
• 18.1
• 18.2
• 18.3.0

Website

• Product: https://github.com/hapijs/joi/

CPE 2.3info

• 🔒
• 🔒
• 🔒

CPE 2.2info

• 🔒
• 🔒
• 🔒

CVSSv4info

CVSSv3info

CVSSv2info

Exploitinginfo

Threat Intelligenceinfo

Countermeasuresinfo

Timelineinfo

Sourcesinfo

Entryinfo

If you want to get the best quality for vulnerability data then you always have to consider VulDB.

Discussion